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CGSpace Mass Tweeter is a tool to mass-tweet CGSpace entries to twitter, while providing the status of each entry as being tweeted or not.

System Overview

Fig. 1: High-level System Overview

1. A twitter user signs up on the system through OAuth.

2. The signed in user pulls items from CGSpace through its REST API endpoint, https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/items/. Currently, only the items title, handle and last modified fields are imported.

3. The imported items are presented as a list that can be searched and/or sorted. The status of each items, whether it has been tweeted or not is also indicated per item.

4. The user selects items of interest to tweet using the selection checkboxes available for each item and starts the batch process to tweet them. The system tweets each selected item one at a time every 38 seconds (to comply with Twitter's API usage terms), and show a status report as a notification.

Technology Stack

The application is built using Meteor: The JavaScript App Platform. Fig. 2: The Meteor Stack

To know more about the development process, the structure of the app please see the Development Sections.

How to use the System

The system is primarily intended for use by CGIAR Social Media engagement personnel as part of a temporary solution to the CGSpace items visibility issue in relation to the Altmetric service.

The following are the steps in using the system.

• Sign Up/Sign In with a Twitter account
• Import CGSpace Items
• Sort/Search Items and View Tweet Information
• Select and Tweet Items

Sign Up with a Twitter account

It is a requirement that users have a Twitter account that they could use to sign in to the system.

Here are the steps to signing in:

1. Go to the live application at http://cgstweets.meteor.com
2. The sign in page would load with a Sign In with Twitter button. Click that button.
3. This will initiate the OAuth login process which will pop-out a new browser window in which you will be asked to sign in to Twitter.
4. After signing or if you were already signed in, you will be asked to allow the application to access your Twitter account. You must allow this in order to use the system.
5. Once you agree with the request you will be redirected back to the application, and will be signed in.

Import CGSpace Items

The first order of business before tweeting is importing the items to tweet. The application has some configuration options such as setting the REST API endpoint and the number of items to skip before fetching items from CGSpace. The following are the steps in importing items to the system:

1. (Optional) If you have a custom REST API endpoint to use, select the Set API Endpoint option and provide the URL in the text field provided.
2. (Optional) If you would like to specify the number of items to skip when querying for items, select the Specify Items to skip options and provide the number of items to skip in the text field.
3. To specify the number of CGSpace items to import, by default this is set to 50 and can go up to 1000 entries.
4. Click on the import button to start the process.
5. The system will show a notification that the process has been started and the progress of it. Once completed another notification will inform you how many items have been imported.

Note: Sometimes the number of items imported will be less than the number of items requested. This is because the system checks to see if an item is not already in its database before it imports it. This mechanism has been setup to eliminate duplicates, since the REST API currently available does not specify how items are ordered.

Sort and Search Items and View Tweet Information

This feature helps in finding specific CGSpace items one would like to tweet. As any application that has a list, this one allow you to sort and search entries.

To Sort Items

1. Click on the table header that has the title of the field that you would like to sort the entries with. E.g. click on the Title table header to sort using the title field.
2. Click on up and down arrows in circles to sort the items in ascending or descending order respectively.

To Search Items

There are two types of searches, one is for normal text search and the other is a date based search. This will be based on the data type of the search field selected.

To Search by Text (for Title or Handle fields)

1. Select either the Title or Handle table headers. The selected header will be highlighted and the a simple search form will appear in the top section of the page.
2. Use the search form to fill in the text to search.

To Search by Date (for Last Modified or Imported On fields)

1. Select either the Last Modified or Imported On table headers. The selected header will be highlighted and search by date form appears in the top section of the page.
2. Use the search by date form to specify the dates you want to search for.

Tweet Items and View Tweet Information

This is the main purpose of the system, that is to select a number of entries from CGSpace and Tweet them.

To Tweet Items

1. Select a number of entries you desire to tweet by click on the checkbox next to each item. A maximum of 50 items can be tweeted at a time.
2. Schedule the items to be tweeted by clicking on the Tweet button on the top section of the page.

To View Tweet Information Once an item is tweeted the system will keep track of who tweeted the item and when. To make it easier to identify already tweeted items their background colors are changed to blue and an information icon is added to the item as shown below.

1. Search for already tweeted items in the list.
2. Click on the information icon i, this will pop-out a modal window to list who tweeted the item and when.